Sunday, June 26, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Eighteen: Soul Love (ATOM's Pink Innards Mix) by David Bowie

This is a version of the classic Ziggy Stardust track from the project that saw modern mash-up DJs remix the classic album. And it's....odd. ATOM has done a lot to submerge Bowie's vocals except at very key times--in many spots, it seems like he's playing with the gain too much to give Bowie the sound of someone trying to keep his head above water--and has done something that makes the drum line sound distorted by blown speakers. I have to say that I don't think it does Bowie's song about the way the meaning of love can change from person to person (a mother's love for her son, who lost his life for love of country; new lovers discovering each other; the love of God being used by a priest for comfort) any service. It's too busy, drawing attention to the mix more than the song itself.

A good remix, like a good cover song or a good mash-up, should illuminate the original in some way. I fear that the art of the remix is lost when it comes to genres outside of hip-hop. There was a time not that long ago when even the most inconsequential single got a 12 inch remix--Hell, I have very vivid memories of listening, with some incredulity, to a remix of Warren Zevon's "Leave My Monkey Alone" on that aberration of a radio station we call Z100. Don't get me wrong, there are mash-up DJ's who do some great straight remixes--I've talked briefly about DJ Earworm before, for example--But ATOM's efforts here do not give me much hope that art will return.

If you're curious about the whole project, which also includes remixes by other famous mash-up stars like A Plus D, ToTOM and the project's compiler, DJBC, go to The Ziggy Remixed Page.

No video for this one, but here's one for the more effective, pure mash-up that A Plus D put together for the very same project, "Stardust Kids."

Thursday, June 23, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Seventeen: I Put A Spell On You by Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra Featuring David Gilmour and Mica Paris

And here comes another cover song that grew out of a British show...

The show is question is Later With Jools Holland, a talk show featuring the former Squeeze member interviewing and then jamming with musical guests. This show has been going on for years--I seem to have some vague remembrances of seeing older episodes broadcast on the peculiar neither-fish-nor-fowl cable network Trio back when I still had cable. As a fan of Holland's reaching back to his Squeeze-y days, I found it a fun watch, especially given the nature of guests he used to pull down.

Not surprisingly, given the musical nature of the show prompted Holland to form a band for touring during his off time, which in form prompted the creation of the Small World Big Band series of CDs, where the band did covers with some of Holland's favorite guests. This is a cover of the Screaming Jay Hawkins standard with Hawkins being channeled by soul singer Mica Paris. And, of course, the lead guitar is played by Pink Floyd member David Gilmour.

It's pretty interesting how 'I Put A Spell On You' is one of those songs that have resisted reinterpretation; even when the cover artist changes the tempo or the arrangement, the long shadow of Hawkins' distinctive style will always result in the vocalist belting it like his or her life depended on it...and Holland and company simply doesn't resist. They embrace the primal nature of the song, of the lyrics and only interpret it on the basic level...and what results isn't bad at all.

Usually I am resistant to covers that just mimic the original, but even I have to acknowledge there are certain songs that were designed to be portrayed exactly the way they sprung forth into the public conscienceless. And when I'm confronted with one of those, I have to use different tools to evaluate the cover, look to the way the individual performers play their part. And using those tools, I have to say...this works.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Sixteen: Confessions by Violent Femmes

This is an odd fish--it's a live recording from the Minnesota band Violent Femmes, a band that could only have been successful during the height of what was--in retrospect--laughably called 'alternative music' in the '80's.

For those of you who weren't there, 'alternative music' was the catch-all label given to a rather eclectic variety of music that sprung up as a reaction to the punk/hardcore movements of the late 70's. Still embracing the DIY esthetics of punk while also hewing closer to a more melodic, less confrontation model of popular music, the alternative scene was surprisingly inclusive. When I was going to Hunter College, I listened to WLIR, a small alternative music station out of Long Island, and they happily played the colorful gender-bending pop of Culture Club shoulder to shoulder with the just-now-discovering-their-power-pop-muscles of The Replacements and the electro-pop incarnation of Ministry. Oh, and these guys.

The Violent Femmes represent a corner of the alternative music neighborhood that seemed truly...disturbed without being aggressive. Along with Wall of Voodoo (and later, the solo work of Stan Ridgway), The Soft Boys (and later, the solo work of Robyn Hitchcock), The Bad Seeds, and early Talking Heads, this trio seemed to delight in wallowing very quietly in the thoughts of the borderline insane. The people given voice by vocalist Gordan Gano weren't well--Hell, in many cases they were one step away from suicide ('Kiss Off,' the song the bootleg this song came from is named after, is an angry, defiant suicide note in musical form) or murder. Gano's voice, perpetually hoarse and reedy, never quite in tune, frequently cracking, is the voice of every serial killer who's ever haunted your dreams.

I should prolly talk about the song itself, huh?

It's proof of what I've been saying...the ramblings of a man driven so insane by his isolation that he's about to do something truly terrible. What we don't know--there's lots of references to Gano's character hacking, fighting and crawling away to die, but never anything concrete. But the way he spells it out to us makes it clear that when he's done, the floor will be red with blood and the air will be thick with screams. And the way Gano, in his signature croak, explains it all, quietly and deliberately (even at the moment you expect him to start ranting, his voice is extremely composed) makes it all the more creepy. That bassist Brian Ritchie and drummer Victor deLorenzo take their cues from Gano, keeping the melody similarly subdued, only adds to the impact. Hell, the only people who really get to cut loose are The Horns of Dilemma, the horns section that were the Femmes' frequent collaborators--and because they're outsiders, their crazy honking works.

The Femmes have disintegrated, in part due to a legal battle between Gano and Ritchie over music rights, but their uniqueness should never be overlooked. Yes, that same sort of melodic grand guignol tradition they championed has been carried forward by people like The Decemberists--but I'm never as scared of Colin Meloy as I once was of Gano.
 

Friday, June 17, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Fifteen: One More For The Lovers by The Verve

And tonight's song...a demo from a band perhaps best known for being sued.

I think everyone who loves music knows the story of The Verve; they stand alongside Biz Markie as cautionary tales in regards to taking care of oneself in the changing landscape of the music business. Fronted by Richard Ashcroft, this has never been the most...consistent of bands. They had already broken up and reformed once before the hit that would make them (in)famous broke through. That hit, 'Bittersweet Symphony,' utilized a sample from an obscure album of Rolling Stone covers performed by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra. The sample had been licensed from the record company who put out the original album--but Keith Richards and Mick Jagger still sued them, arguing successfully that they used 'too much' of the sample, which resulted in the biggest single Verve ever had being credited to Richards and Jagger. I don't think the band ever quite recovered after that--there was a second break-up two years after the single's 1997 release, and even though they've reunited yet again, neither this third run nor Ashcroft's solo career has reached the heights they did off that song.

This song is sorta tangentially related to 'Bittersweet Symphony,' as it comes from 'Sympathy For The Demos,' a bootleg collection of demos put together by the band shortly after Ashcroft got guitarist Nick McCabe to rejoin the band after a year away. The collection as a whole is rather fascinating, as the songs contained within seem to mark an attempt to fuse the band's psychedelic expermentalism of its first run with the more conventional Brit-poppiness of its second run. You can almost hear the 60isms dripping off the echoey vocals and the jangling guitars, making the whole thing sound like some recently uncovered nugget destined to be on one of the many compilation indie record labels put out in the 80's. It's one of the things that made those first two Verve albums both unique and a touch inaccessible; the sense that they were both unique and familiar, both comforting and unsettling at the same time.

To the best of my knowledge, this song never surfaced on any official Verve or Richard Ashcroft release--like most bootlegs, documentation is iffy at best (I could not even find an accurate lyric sheet for this song), although the similarities in the arrangement make me think it mutated into "A Song For The Lovers" on one of Ashcroft solo albums. You used to be able to find zip files containing the whole Sympathy For The Demos set for free everywhere--I got mine from Heather Browne's excellent I Am Fuel, You Are Friends blog--but they seem to have disappeared from these venues. Still, a Google search can take you to a number of sites that offer the collection as a digital download for a nominal fee (the average price I saw was $2.50), and if you're interested in mid-90's Brit-pop, it's worth a listen.

Here's the song in one of those 'I love it so much I'm posting it with a static image' youtube thingies...

Thursday, June 16, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Fourteen: "Sleeping Lions" by The Wind Whistles

This time out, we've got a song from a folk duo from Vancouver taken from a concept album they put out in 2009, Animals Are People, Too. They're also indicative of this new breed of artists who offer the digital forms of their albums for free--you can still get this collection of songs from their record company, ahhhhh records here.

This is an interesting song, with some swooping, soaring arrangements and some really beautiful harmonies. Those harmonies are really the thing that makes the song work, as Tom and Lisa (the couple that make up the band) manage to give the piece a much larger feel than you would think possible from just two people with just an acoustic bass and guitar.

And they're the sort of band I could not imagine existing for long in a world where they'd have to go through the record company system.

Which is why, the screaming of the RIAA nonwithstanding, these alternative distribution methods work. People like this band are making music available for free...and are reaping enough money off of ancillary sale of the physical CD, or donations, or--as they're doing now with a project they're calling 'The Secret Album'--inviting fan participation in the way an album is structured. This is the positive side of the Untamed Frontiers of The Internet, a place where people can find and support each other instead of being tossed out into the general populace to sink or swim.

There's no video for this song--but then, I guess since you can nab the whole album for free, there's no need for me to show you how good this song is. So instead, here's the video for the album's single, "Turtle," where you get a sense of their harmonies and see them wearing giraffe and panda masks and...yes, playing a turtle...

Sunday, June 12, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Thirteen: Someday You Will Be Loved by Death Cab For Cutie

And for tonight's entry...emo as grand guignol theater, the light version.

Don't get me wrong, though--this is not exactly meant as a slam. I've liked Death Cab For Cutie ever since I heard 'Soul Meets Body' on one of my co-worker's iPods (there was a comical few weeks when I would hear the song and ask him 'who is this band?', to which he'd roll his eyes and remind me he had already told me). What appeals to me is not just the band's sound, which conceals echoes of shoegaze and dream pop in its arrangements, but the fact that they--like their bigger brother, The Decemberists--know the power of telling tales. Ben Gibbard doesn't just paint a picture with his music; he spins these grand gothic tableaus of loss and sadness, tragedy and disaster. Yes, on some level I know I'm too old to be affected by this sort of neo-romantic tatt...but on another level I hope I never outgrow the capacity to appreciate the melodramatic charms of this band.

This is a pretty hopeful song even though it is, at its core, a story about a man fleeing in the face of romance. Yes, Gibbard runs and deserts his lover in the middle of night (presumably to run to Zoe Deschanel...sigh)...but he leaves a note that tells her that the thought of him will fade away, and in their place will be new memories of the man she's going to find, the man to whom her heart belongs to now even though she hasn't met him yet. It's a bittersweet message, made all the more bittersweet given the arrangement that sounds both modern and yet also of another, older time...

And for the record, I don't resent Ben Gibbard for going home to Zoe Deschanel every night. Really, I don't.

Here's the cool stop-motion video for the song. Later videos from the band are more in keeping with the 'here's the band, and here they are performing' aesthetics, but I find this sort of unsteady, wonky method of getting their songs across more appropriate...
 

Saturday, June 11, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Twelve: Political Science by We Are The Willows

And tonight, we're back to cover songs...to be precise, a cover of a Randy Newman classic by the band psuedonym of Peter Michael Miller.

One of the many, many terrible crimes perpetrated on us by a culture that seems incapable of remembering anything older then ten years is that it looks like Newman will be remembered more for being the guy who wrote a bunch of songs that toys can sing and not as the truly savage, irreverent musical satirist he once was...a man so unconcerned with making nice that he once brought down the ire of the little people lobby with his song 'Short People'--a song that was designed to show how thoroughly stupid racism was by replacing 'black people' or 'latin people' with...you know, short people. But on the flip side, this is the guy who wrote an equally rude satire of 'New York, New York,' and then was taken aback when it was embraced as an anthem by the same people he was jeering at....namely, 'I Love L.A.'.

And this song is definitely from that period in Newman's life, a strange tale in which he gives us a litany of excuses for why we shouldn't stay right here in the US and drop the bomb on everyone else. I have to assume that the vocals on this version are Miller's, electronically altered to sound feminine (the little mini-essay Miller wrote to accompany its debut as part of the excellent Cover Me blog did not indicate if they were his vocals or if he had a guest vocalist), but it's a rather interesting choice. Instead of emulating the soft shoe shuffle of Newman's original, Miller slows it down a bit and turns it into a jazz lounge vamp. What I particularly find charming is how he adds these little pedal-steel sounding 'woooooos' in the background that sound suspiciously like warning sirens...it's as if the man is gussying up the song with a sort of Dr. Strangelove-esque chorus line--hell, if anyone ever thought to commit the heresy of remaking my favorite film of all time, I could see this being on its soundtrack.

While there is no youtube video, an MP3 is still available, free and clear, from the blog that originally sponsored the making of the song. Just click here. And go visit Cover Me Monday through Friday for all sort of high-quality cover song goodness.

For comparioson's sake, here's the original by the one and only Mr. Newman:

And because I think she's quite adorable, here's another cover by Molly Lewis...

Friday, June 10, 2011

ME AND....THE FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE PART TWO: Hackensack

This is the second part of the series that tracks my relationship with one of my favorite bands. You can find the first part here.

So after 'Stacy's Mom' finally disappeared from the Top 40 Hell of Z100, that was it for a while. I sort of packed the Fountains away in the back of my mind with such bands as Eve 6 or Unwritten Law, who managed to write one song that captured my imagination.

Flash forward a few years. By this time I was starting to explore the wide world of podcasting with my own, first tenative step on that road, Other People's Toys. And I was listening to a lot of other people's podcast. I had taken to visiting Podcast Alley every day to look for random podcasts to sample, some of which I added to my list of regular listens, some of which I discarded after an initial spin.

At roughly the same time, one of the music blogs I followed--I really wish I could tell you which one, but it's faded from my aging memory--posted about a new podcast it participated in called The Contrast Podcast. The idea behind this one intrigued me--one Tim Young would announce a particular theme for each episode, then invite podcasters and music bloggers to contribute a song each, accompanied with a minute-or-so introduction explaining why they chose said song. It sounded like fun, so I went to Tim's website and downloaded the four episodes extant at the time. The third episode's theme was songs that were exactly three minutes in length...and one of the songs featured was 'Hackensack.'

This song just drew my attention instantly. It's unlike a lot of what people think of when they think of The Fountains of Wayne, and it's obvious it's different from the opening, loping intro. There's a certain...sneakiness to it that insinuates itself into your brain, while also giving is an insight into what kind of story we're about to hear. This is not the story of a hero, or a romantic lead; this is the story of some poor suck who lives his life on the edges of society, some individual we wouldn't think twice about passing unacknowledged.

...and when we finally hear this person's voice, his plight is even sadder than we imagined. Given a fawning, desperate tone by vocalist Adam Schlesinger, we learn that this is the kind of man who's done nothing--and I mean nothing--with his life. His most glamorous job has been working in a record store, and now he works in the family business 'scraping the paint off hardwood floors,' existing in quiet, horrific monotony...

And then he sees a schoolmate 'in the strangest places'--on television, in magazines, and 'talknig to Christopher Walken' on television. This allows him to create a strange fantasy life where he's waiting for this classmate who made it out, for the moment where she'll come back to Hackensack and save him from his empty world with, it's implied, her love.

On one level, it's a sad little story about seeing a peer make good and inspiring hope in you. We've all had that one classmate who went on to bigger things that lets us know that we can go on to bigger things as well (unfortunately, mine was Vin Diesel...). But that little cameo-in-carpenter-pants isn't enough for Adam and crew. No, with his vocals he gives our POV character a subtle hint that his inspiration is more sinister. He might not just take solace in his classmate's movie star success, but be inspired to take up the mantle of fan/stalker, obsessing about this girl who may be a celebrity, but to him is still the girl he went to school with every morning at 8:15, preparing to return to him.

I've made it clear in the past that I love songs with a tension between melody and lyrics. This isn't quite an exact example of this...but the extra darkness Adam's voice shades it with is what made me pay even more attention to this band.

I still wasn't there to pure fanaticism...but I was getting close.

Next time, we stay with the Contrast Podcast, my strange relationship with a girl who looked like an Ed Benes drawing of Black Canary, and the FoW song that bore her name....

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Eleven: On The Edge by Weezer

Ahhh, yes...the all-over-the-place Weezer. I'm surprised they haven't come up any sooner.

And I will admit to having a very ambivalent relationship with this band. After all, you would think I would like Mr. Rivers Cuomo given his geeky nature and his tendency to champion all things nerdy and strange. This is the band that once went on The Tonight Show to show off their snuggies.

And yet, they're very hit and miss. Their recent propensity for putting out a new album every time Cuomo sneezes is a part of that--after a break of three years between Make Believe and 'The Red Album,' they've put out four albums in three years, plus two albums worth of Cuomo's demos. But I think their uneveness started long before their recent run. They're like the infamous girl with the curl--when they're good, they're great ("Only In Dreams," "Undone," "Hash Pipe," "Buddy Holly," "Beverly Hills," the most recent single "Memories"), and when they're bad--or even average--they're kind of annoying. And because they've become so prolific I've given up on buying their albums...it's a whole lot easier putting up with their dross when I only had to deal with four, five songs out of fifteen every two or three years. When you're dealing with ten, twenty songs every year...well, it's time to walk away.

And I'd put this in the 'kind of annoying' category, a relatively unimaginative riff on The Talking Heads' "Psychokiller," with the POV character becoming more and more agitated by the tenseness of his life. However, the conventional guitar riff does not reflect the lyrics as efficiently as David Bryne's, and Cuomo...well, he comes off as a whiny lil' bastard (which, to be fair, is how he comes off in about 20% of Weezer's songs--although in some of them, like "Beverly Hills," he's a charming and witty whiny bastard). Yeah, he boasts about how he 'punched the devil in the eye'--but do we really believe him? The answer, sadly, is no.

No video. I found a minute long snippet from a live performance I could post...but I don't want to.

Next?

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Ten: Shadowless Heart by Dramarama

And we're back to John Easdale, and a song from their last album as an actual band, Hi-Fi Sci-Fi.

Hi-Fi Sci-Fi was released in 1993, and was really well-received; its sole single, the whistful 'Work For Food' got some play on MTV, and it was the only album that featured Blondie drumer Clem Burke as a full on member of the band.. It's arguably Dramarama's most mature album, dealing head on with Easdale's growing increasing feelings about growing older and the way his priorities have changed--a key song 'Don't Feel Like Doing Drugs' is an interior monologue about aging without grace that's right up there with The Pursuit of Happiness' "I'm An Adult Now" as an anthem for those have to acknowledge it's time to grow up.

There's a similar theme going through 'Shadowless Heart,' as Easdale seems to be asking us to confront the sins of our past, sins that interfere with our present day interactions. These things are anthropomorhized by Easdale's lyrics as strange figures--ghosts, clairvoyants, squids--holding out the tools of our ordinary days, waiting to be acknowledged...and only when we do confront them will we be clear of the darkness inside us. These words are accompanied by what was a signature of Dramarama in its heyday--dark, ominous guitar playing that seems to imply that the worst is still to come in our ordeal, that our road to being cleansed will not be easy.

(Oddly enough, I tried to find a lyrics sheet for this online to cite specific instances...but nothing...huh...)

Shortly after this album was released, Chameleon was dissolved into then-parent company Elektra, and Dramarama was disbanded until Easdale reactivated the band name in 2003. I still miss this incarnation, but look forward to more work from Easdale and company; there's supposedly a new album forthcoming this year.

No video for this--but here's a fan made...shudder...AMV (VGMV?) utilizing footage from Final Fantasy games.....

Thursday, June 9, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Nine: Devil's Brigade by The Dropkick Murphys

Tonight....one of my favorite bands, and definitely my favorite Celtic band--and I owe my discovery of them to The Boston Red Sox.

Here's the deal--as I may have mentioned elsewhere, I am a native New Yorker who was driven a long time ago (thanks to a combination of things, most importantly my repulsion at the sense of entitlement the bulk of New York Yankee fans have, the way the Wilpons just will not run the Mets with any sense of coherence and my need to follow a sports team with an actual legacy, as opposed to stealing a legacy from the Los Angeles Dodgers) to become a Boston Red Sox fan...which did mean a lot of suffering as the Yankees beat our asses time and time again. All the pain fetish objects were in place--Buckner, Dent, etc.

And then in 2004, when I was watching the abberation that was ESPN's Cold Pizza in the mornings before going to work, I learned about this band called The Dropkick Murphys, who had been contracted by the Sox organization to rework the team's old rally song, 'Tessie' for play at the games.

I trust we all know what happened in 2004, right?

I really liked what I heard. I may only be one seventh Irish (don't ask), but I've always had an affinity for Celtic Rock--Hell, there was a period in my younger days, when I was running around with a crazy Turkish girl who would tease my co-workers with stories of being a virgin before going home with me, stripping naked and letting me do whatever evil thing I wanted to her perfect body, where I followed the New York based Celt-Rock combo Black 47. I don't know if it's because of my partial heritage, or because I respond to the unique sounds of the instrumentation, but it's one of my favorite musical genres. And in the Dropkicks, I found a band that combined my love of that genre, my Boston-filic tendencies, and a general attitude I dug.

This song is from The Gang's All Here, the band's second album, and the first to feature Al Barr on vocals. Barr's voice is rougher than original vocalist Mike McColgan (who left the band to become a firefighter--how much more Boston can you get?), but he's also got that raw emotionalism that I respond to in other vocalists I've discussed in this series in the past, like Dickie Betts and Joe Jackson. It makes a lot of their songs--which at turns paints pictures of living poor, political activism and strange, electrified recreations of classic Irish standards--more vital, breathing a battered life into them that many other Celt-Rock bands just can't get right.

The song itself is both a morality play and a tragedy--it addresses a young man who has allowed the easy avenues of crime to dictate his path...but because he refused to dig in and find 'the strength within,' he's now become part of 'The Devil's Brigade,' which are marching him toward a fate that will lead him lying in the gutter, shot or insensate. It's an unvarnished, loud, confrontational song that hides the poetry in its heart with an unsentimental sense of reality. Nowhere does the singer blame other ills--yes, he says, this world you're living in is pretty nasty, but you chose not to rely on yourself and rise above...and now whatever promise you had has been torn apart.

The band didn't make a video for this song...here's a performance from Al's first gig with the band....

Sunday, June 5, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Eight: Someday I Will Treat You Good by We Only Said

I know very little about this band; a quick Google search reveals they are French, which you could kind of guess at from their phrasing. The sound itself is very subdued--save for a bridge that features what sounds like a synth swirl, it's just two acoustic guitars and the voices of the two band members.

It does turn out that the song itself is a cover from a French tribute album to the band Sparklehorse. Not knowing the original, I can't evaluate it in this context. I will say that the song--an ambivilent number where the POV character is justifying leaving his girlfriend on the side of the road ('The beautiful ones are always crazy' 'everything that's made is made to decay' 'she just couldn't see things my way') while promising to her that he will treat her fine one day--does benefit from this minimalist setting. It actually comes off as a bit creepy, like this is the beginning of some scene of carnage from an ultra-low budget thriller or horror film.

I don't know if I like this one; it might be a little too emo for my power-pop loving tastes...but I don't hate it.

No video for this one...but here's another song by the band to give you a sense of what they're like....

...and here is the video for the Sparklehorse original...

 
 

Saturday, June 4, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Seven: The Superstitious Sound Of The Next Episode by DJ Schmolli

Okay...we've covered my love of mash-up culture in an entry in last year's cycle. This is a mash-up from an Austrian DJ, and it comes from what has become his signature project, the Falco re:loaded album.
I have quite a number of Schmolli mash-ups. I like the way his work tends to be very epic--the average Schmolli track will contain elements from three, four, five, sometimes more songs. Just look at this one--the title indicates that it features elements from Stevie Wonder and Snoop Dogg, and yet out of nowhere Schmolli will throw Amerie, Ashanti or The Pussycat Dolls in to provide background vocals or the bridge, have Malcolm X introduce the song, and then ease the whole production into a grand resetting of Falco's last single here in the states, 'The Sound of Musik'...with a tiny touch of 'Rock Me Amadeus' slid in to herald its arrival.
There are other mash-up producers who try to do these dense, many-layered songs, but frequently they fail in integrating all these disparate elements. DJ Schmolli manages more often than not to make these insane musical gumbos coherent...but don't take my word for it...take a look at his official video for the song...
If you are interested in checking out the entire Falco: reloaded album, just go here. It's really good.
 

Friday, June 3, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Six: I Feel It All (Escort Remix) by Feist

And now...Female Canadian Band Members Who Seem To Do Their Strongest Work On Their Solo Albums.

I first became acquainted with The Broken Social Scene's Leslie Feist the way a lot of people did--when Apple decided it wanted to showcase the new high resolution screen on its iPod nano by featuring her song '1234' on a commercial. The song (which is not her own; it was written by an Australian singer/songwriter named Sally Seltman, although Feist did rewrite some lyrics)'s use there, with its simple lyrics about young love and how we all yearn to recapture that feeling, catapulted her fourth solo effort, The Reminder into best-seller territory and made her into a minor celebrity. And I admit, if the young alt-rock geek's heart that I keep in a jar above my desk didn't belong to another Canadian Band Member Who Seems To Do Her Strongest Work On Her Solo Albums, The New Pornographer's Neko Case, I'd be seriously crushing on her....

"I Feel It All" was the third single from The Reminder--this is the Escort Remix that found its way onto a UK promo single. It was the follow-up to "1234", and all told, it was a wise choice. This song has the same upbeat message, although the melody is more energetic than its laconic, easy-going predecessor. Hell, you can almost imagine the same character doing both songs--with "1234" being her statement of hope and intent, and "I Feel It All" being her declaration that she has found the person that makes her feel the way she wants to in the previous song...and intends to 'win the war' to claim his heart. She knows it's not going to be easy ("No one likes to take a test/Sometimes you know that more is less")...but she's going in with eyes open, aware that if she loses this man, she'll be 'the one to break my heart.' All told, this song definitely makes more sense as a single than the rather dark and morose "My Moon, My Man," which was the album's lead-off offering.

Supposedly there's a new Broken Social Scene album on the way, and Ms. Feist is not in evidence on it. Which gives me hope that she's got another solo effort on the way.

Here's the video. Much like the one for "1234," it's very simple, but very effective--and ties into the whole 'self-reliance' angle of the song. Although I would not advise trying to recreate this one like you might the previous single's video...
 

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Five: In The Rain by Edric Haleen

A while back, I wrote about this song, which was part of the Master of Song Fu contest originally begun by Kevin Smith's QuckStop Entertainment. I didn't care for it much.

Haleen is a Michigan-based teacher and according to what little I can find out on the webs, he's an aspiring librettist for musicals--and it shows in this song, which tells a little story about the singer in the middle of a dilemma. Faced with his best friend, the woman of his dreams, and an old man who is seriously ill, maybe dying, all in the pouring rain, Haleen's POV character must decide who to give a ride in his car. And he comes up with a solution that gives everyone what they need. It tells a neat little story in a minimum of time, and I could easily see it as part of a small off-Broadway review. And Haleen's voice may not be distinctive, but it is certainly fits the style that he writes songs in--and in that context, he excels. Hell, after hearing this, I'm curious to hear the musical adaptation he wrote of Jean Merrill's The Pushcart Wars.

Going back to that first song I talked about in last year's 30Ds30Ss, I can definitely say that this is the kind of thing I was referring to when I said there is some real gold in those MoSF mixes. Sure, it's not exactly the kind of thing I can imagine grooving to as I make my way down Myrtle Avenue, but it is something cool to listen to when I'm working around the house.

No video, but you can read the lyrics, download the mp3, and/or read a little essay Edric wrote about how he came to write the song here.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

40 Songs, 40 Days (2011 Edition), Day Four: One Thing by Elbow

This is actually a live recording from BBC One Radio's Live Lounge of British band Elbow covering Amerie's rather empty pop/soul hit from a few years back. The tradition is for any act that does an appearance at The Live Lounge has to do a cover of a recent pop hit. I love these things, and not just because you get to hear a bunch of guys from Manchester trying to pretend to be urban hip hop kids (I've talked about how I feel far too many of these 'ironic' covers of hip hop songs by alt-bands fall flat on their face) but because I get the impression that so many of the bands doing these Live Lounge covers are honest fans of the songs and are striving to do right by them. Okay, Elbow does fall down toward the end when they start making chipmunks-on-helium voices with their vocoders, but there's a definite sense of Gary Garvey trying to capture the same sense of lightness Amerie's vocals did in the original...now, because Garvey is a deep voiced man from the North of England and Amerie is a Massachusetts born half-Korean/Half African American chanteuse, it falls down hilariously, but you appreciate the effort these guys put into this.

As for the song itself....it was very popular when I first started working at Myrtle Sporting Goods, and it was mildly annoying but overall inocuous--save for one thing. Throughout the song, according to posted lyrics, Amerie chants 'knock, knock, knock, oh.' However, everyone who worked at the store, including me, kept hearing it as 'gobblegobblegobble.' It used to crack me up hearing this woman start acting like a turkey in the middle of this girl-power-guy-diss standard pop-fluff. And apparently we weren't the only one; I vividly remember hearing an interview with this woman on Z-100 here in New York where she vehemently denied that she was gobbling.

It was one of maybe three times I ever actually found the reprehensible Z-100 funny.

You'll notice, incidentally, that in recreating this timeless....well, timed, classic, Elbow chooses to go with 'gobblegobblegobble' instead of what Amerie claims she was singing. And that warms my heart all the more.